A Ghost's Guide to Interacting with the Living
by Felicity G. Silvers
Summary: As Tony quickly discovered, being dead sucked.


Someone made an art of a ghost Tony and living Loki who couldn't see him.

I have Ideas about ghost stories. Obviously. As you'll see. Something dark and gleeful in my heart leaped at the chance to write a ghost story and here it is.

* * *

Being dead _sucked_.

First there was the initial surprise—waking up (kind of) to his tower and his home to find it decayed and rotting, steel supports showing through some of the walls had been enough of a shock it nearly killed him again. Could have anyway, if he could have died again.

(He was still working on what was involved with staying dead.)

It wasn't until he saw the date and realized he could see through himself that it clicked.

He still couldn't quite remember what had did him in, but figured it had been something both stupid and heroic and probably _awesome_.

Second came boredom. There wasn't much he could _do_. There certainly weren't any other ghosts around the tower, and the people he saw tended to come and go and no matter what he did he couldn't _do_ anything to get their attention. Hell, he couldn't even _affect_ anything, whether a person was touching it or not. He didn't need to sleep, so he didn't, and he spent those first few days trying to think his way out of his situation.

(Tony was utterly convinced this was garbage. He didn't believe in God or the afterlife or anything, so _why was he here_?)

Third.

Third.

Third: people.

Steve, Clint, Bruce, Natasha. Coulson once—and what a joke, that Tony died before Coulson. Thor and his sweetheart Jane. Pepper. Oh Pepper. Quiet and capable, and she never grieved where Tony could see, always somewhere _away_, where Tony couldn't follow, and there was more than one time he reached out and passed through.

Tony wasn't sure if he was grateful or not that he never saw Pepper grieve. Sometimes, he hated she didn't grieve in the tower, but then he'd realized he wasn't sure he could deal with two.

Two people, because Loki.

Because Tony would hear the team whisper concern and worry, hear Thor's worry how Loki fought, how Loki had gone quiet. He could see the tightness in the edges of Loki's eyes, his mouth, in his posture, withdrawn and reserved a way he hadn't been in years.

(_We'll always have tomorrow_, Tony had said, because he'd slipped death so many times already, how he could he not one more time?)

Loki didn't grieve in public, and his grief in private was silent, sharp, shoulders hunched in and hands tracing over an arc reactor Tony still worried about not being in his chest.

_I'm here_, Tony would say, and Loki wouldn't hear and didn't hear and couldn't hear, and Tony would repeat himself, hovered close as he could, hands ghosting over skin he couldn't touch, to cup a sharp face or clasp around hands and he'd shake and cry, chanting _I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, Loki, I'm still here, look_, and he'd slip a little more, a little more despair, a little more madness, until he sometimes forgot why it mattered Loki see him, Loki know, only that he _needed to_.

Tony obsessed and obsessed and forgot, little by little, he needed to be moving on, figuring a way _out_ and instead focused on a way _back_. To show. Hands buried in wiring, feeling and sensing and sounding out electrical currents and pulses, ones and zeros an endless cascade, lists of possibilities, of _ways to cause an effect_, each tried, each discarded, endlessly.

_I'm here_ he whispered and chanted and prayed, and Loki did not hear him, could not hear him.

_Loki_ he said, endlessly, letters tripping over themselves, scrambled and bad data—_Loki Loki Loki lokilokilokiloikiolkikolikolikol ikol ikol ikol_.

(And how he _hated_, that Loki could not _hear_, Loki who was _magic _and _fire_ and _wit_, Loki who could charm anyone, Loki who heard _everything_, and how he _hated_ that Loki could not hear _him_.)

He saw Loki, and he reached out and for a moment he thought perhaps Loki could see, _could_, and something close to _joy_ thrummed through him and Loki reached past, reached through, picked up the ringing phone Tony had not heard (because what he heard was the living, was _Loki_, and he did not remember a time this wasn't true, couldn't remember _why Loki_), and _rage_ howled through him, incandescent, _wildfire_.

Tony howled and in Loki's hand the phone sparked electricity before _shattering_, plastic and metal and circuits like shrapnel, and all Tony could think was _I am here stop ignoring me stop stop stop _even as Loki dropped the phone in shock, backing up as Tony lunged forward.

_I am still __**here**__, _Tony screamed, and overhead the lights flickered and buzzed before exploding, alarms going off to echo his howls, shrieking feedback and static and _noise_.


End file.
